Although the present invention addresses a need that is more general, the invention is inspired by solving the problem of how to make it easier for mobile phone users to personalize their phones with features and functionalities that meet their needs. The invention provides a method for sharing and finding the correct phone software for use in a device, such as a mobile phone.
For installing software (SW) to mobile phones, SW is often downloaded from the Internet and exported from a PC to a mobile phone, which requires of course that a PC and phone be equipped in such a way that the PC can send SW files to the phone. If installing SW directly to a mobile phone over e.g. a GPRS network, finding the correct WAP website and then the correct SW product and version can be difficult when looking at the typically rather small display of a mobile phone. In case of updating SW installed on a PC, updater software is available to make the updating easy to do. For mobile phones there is a commercially available so-called Way Finder updater service for making updating on a mobile phone easier once the Way Finder updater application is installed In the mobile phone. For both the PC updater and the mobile phone updater, it is necessary to already have an earlier version of the SW installed on the device with the updater feature, or separate SW specifically for the updater functionalities.
In addition to the updater service, the prior art also provides for what is called viral distribution, which enables SW already hosted on a device to spread/distribute itself by simply sending a copied version of its installation file to another device, rather like a biological virus spreads. In this case, in order for the distributed file to work successfully, the other (target) device must be similar to or even the same as first (source) device. In viral distribution, UserA already has a piece of SW installed. From inside this SW application, UserA is allowed to send the SW to UserB. The advantages of the viral distribution are both social and technical. On the one hand, UserA already knows the SW and can tell UserB about what it does, which makes the SW choice easier for UserB (especially when advice comes from an acquaintance). But once UserA has sent the SW to UserB, UserA can also act as face-to-face technical support and instruct UserB on how to install the SW and make use of at least some of its features. This can be very valuable for consumers. In case of mobile phones, viral software distribution can be typically done using proximate radio (i.e. over a link provided by short-range radio, such as according to the Bluetooth protocol) or via an infrared link.
There are at least two problems with viral distribution according to the prior art. First, the SW developer has no control of the SW distribution, which makes it suitable only for free SW or SW sharing. Second, and more importantly, interoperability across phone models and operating platforms is not easy to provide. In practice, the phone models/platforms of UserA and UserB need to be similar or even the same in order for UserB to be able to install and utilize SW version received from UserA. Since according to the prior art, the sending user can still successfully send the SW version to another device without taking into consideration the compatibility of the receiving device, it could potentially frustrate both sending and receiving users to find that the distributed SW version is of no use on the recipient's device. In certain cases, the SW being thus virally distributed can be multi-version—i.e. can distribute as a file including various different versions of the SW—but then the SW package tends to be undesirably large, creating an additional burden to the users of the SW which can be often critically unacceptable due to the limited resources available on mobile devices. In most cases, ordinary consumers are not aware of, for instance, the differences between e.g. ISA and Symbian platforms, which greatly complicates efforts for virally distributing SW.
What is needed is a method in-between traditional over-the-air distribution and viral distribution, a method that ideally overcomes the above-described limitations of both.